Wildflower Scene with Stages

 Wildflower Scene 

5" x 7" on Uart 400 Sanded Pastel Paper

Today I did something a lot like a painting lesson. It was an experiment in several ways. Would the palette of Terry Ludwig's 14 Best Loved Basics be a good landscape palette to do a scene with hills, trees, a wildflower meadow and a beautiful blue sky? I'm happy to say yes, the results are above!

And I took some progress photos to show how I did it.

 Stage 1 Alcohol Wash In Progress

I tried something I've seen in several videos and blogs by serious pastelists. An alcohol wash like the ones Karen Margulis uses. I've long admired her results and she's a mad expert for painting wildflower meadows. Mine's just a crude attempt in her direction, she is much more concise and has the practice to say in two strokes what takes me six.

From what I saw in her examples, it doesn't take much pastel on the paper to do an alcohol wash. The alcohol should be 70% Rubbing Alcohol, the kind you get at a drugstore. Not the drinking kind even if some artists use vodka. Put the vodka in the artist and the rubbing alcohol swished on the painting with as big a brush as you've got. If you can't tell the difference, stop drinking. Do not store these in unlabeled containers for that reason.

Just swish the liquid around over the pastels within the area to be washed that color. Really don't worry about edges. I was too careful here and treated it more like a coloring book but I wanted to keep the rough abstract shapes of my bands. Karen would've slopped it on and let it drip mingling some colors for cool effects down in the meadow. That's practice for you. This is my first go. It actually will still work done this way.

 Alcohol Wash Complete

Here's how it looks with the wash in all over the painting. Now I'm not using plain beige paper anywhere. The color has gone deep into the crevices of the paper and maybe soaked in between the sand grains. It's not going anywhere. Any flecks of paper that show between my strokes or in a broken color passage will be the color of the underpainting.

The trees band is brown and the meadow band pink because these warm colors will make the green sticks in my Ludwig set pop and look greener. Since those three greens are nearly brown, I thought that was seriously important to try to give an impression the forest wasn't dead yet.

Background areas done.

Work back to front, which in a landscape like this is top to bottom. I painted the sky first and forgot to take a photo of just the sky in. There are three shades of blue in the set plus a very pale yellow nearly white. I used all four of those colors to gradate the sky. I could have blended it more to give a smooth gradation but I liked that look as if wispy clouds were blowing up in the distance.

The hills were mostly the light and medium dusty violet in the set with a bit of sky blue in the shadows to lighten and harmonize the darker violet. 

The trees I used all three greens, the gold stick and the deep dark violet. Yay for the deep dark violet in the darkest shadows at bases of trees. It helps define them. They are too small and too far away for me to put in trunks and branches but in a larger painting I might have brought some trees and bushes forward into the meadow band too to help give scale and those might get shadows and trunks.

Here's the finish again so you can see the meadow up close:

Finished painting

I did not pick out any grass blades or weeds with leaves. Most of that area I just used blocky vertical strokes with the ends of the pastels, the shorter side. I put a little green in over the gold and a touch of brown then started adding flower passages with the corners of the flower colors. At the end I added some white and blue flowers. I deliberately scumbled over the distant ones with the pale violet to push the middle ground back into the distance and cut down into the meadow area with the forest colors again. Then signed it.

A cool little experiment that worked. I might try this again with a good photo reference and see what I get, since I still have the other piece of Uart 400 to play with. Small paintings like this are fun to use to try different things, you can always try again if there's something about it you don't like!

Monochrome Blue Skyscape

Monochrome Blue Skyscape

Winsor & Newton Watercolour Marker, Prussian Blue Hue

Stillman & Birn Zeta journal 7" square

The other half of this month's new art supplies arrived and so I could not resist at least getting in a test sketch. These markers are everything I hoped they'd be - artist grade watercolor in a marker form for quick sketching and underpainting. Watersoluble, they can be pulled out into midtones and light values with a wet brush or in this case a waterbrush for fast pen and wash studies.

So I goofed around with a familiar subject, imaginary clouds and ways of rendering them in pen. It worked. The loose lines and soft washes worked together and the Prussian Blue Hue has such a great long value range that I'll have no trouble getting darks either in watercolor painting or pen-wash or underpainting pastel field sketches.

I'll be reviewing the Travel Set in my Art Supplies Review blog soon, watch for more details about the product and how it handles. I may do some more tests but as an example sketch, this really worked! I did something I've wanted to do in pen-wash for the longest time - got the sky gradient in, even if exaggerated!

Autumn Shore - Blue Earth Pastels

Autumn Shore

8" x 7 1/2" approx.

Blue Earth "Land & Sea" set of 21

Canson All-Media paper, white

This is a test painting of the new pastels I just got. I finally gave in to the great assortment of values in the Blue Earth sets of 21. It became a real exercise in subsitution as a gorgeous orange tree could not be rendered with just the pastels in the box. Though the result of using the very pale pinkish color for it was interesting and I had fun with it. Not that happy with the big rock in the water, really could have left it out or done it blockier but I kept adjusting color on it to get it gray. 

For an experiment though, it is a great success. I love the range of values in the box, love the juicy impasto strokes and their super soft texture. They're fun to paint with and I can keep going when I thought I was pretty much done with them if I'd been using others. It will take a light hand to get the best out of these and after this I'll definitely also be using the dozen bright sticks I first bought to test the brand. They'll go into a combined box at some point for convenience.

More about them when I review the pastels. I'd like to do a better painting for the review, but I'm happy with this as a test. I love how some of the trees came out and how some of the reflections worked. 

Nothing is wasted. This is just my opinion of it too - others may look and go wow, Rob, you outdid yourself here. I know now what textures I can get on plain paper and the next step is using these on sanded paper - or as finishing layers in a painting done with firmer pastels. They'll shine for that.

Reworked it a little, unsatisfied with the big egg shaped rock in the water. I like it better now.

Autumn Shore, reworked

mostly by adding reeds and moss to the big rock

Pine from Memory

Pine from memory

5" x 7"

Rembrandt pastels on gray Strathmore Artagain paper

Experimenting with sky holes, asymmetry, graceful shape and painting from memory, I wound up giving it dawn light and snow on the ground - but not on the branches, where it blew off in a strong wind. I've seen pines in a snowy area that lost their snow to wind or sun before all the snow on the ground melted.

I should have been doing my novel, but I painted first. Happily the book's going well now so I took a break to post this. Onward with both! Sometimes it's good to break away for a little while just to paint.

Pen and Watercolor Flowers, Life Sketches

Pen & Watercolor Flowers

Stillman & Birn 7" square Zeta journal

I had still more time after working on the pastel landscape and changed mediums to get some distance from its problems. So I opened up my photo collection in my Kindle and found lots of flowers from the SFGH memory garden. Picked out three that I have no idea what they are. "Daisyish" is not a proper species name or common name, it's just the lower left one is in that category. Then there's "red and yellow long trumpetish ones" and "weird shaped one with the two big petals like butterfly wings and a nozzle." Such scientific nomenclature. Anyone who knows what any of them are, comment and tell me!

Then after I went out, I sketched several San Francisco residents just hanging out in the Tenderloin and some beautiful old houses visible from the fifth floor family health center Gold Team clinic. The nurse took a look at it and recognized which buildings they were, so I'm very happy I got the likeness! No pigeons have commented to tell me if I got their likeness though.

San Francisco Residents and Housing

Pigma Micron Pen, Moleskine Pocket Sketchbook (plain)

No, that's not a silhouette, one of the pigeons was black and the other two were different shades of gray or blue/gray. I've seen many different colors of pigeons and even the birds in my city have diversity. Everyone flocks together. There was a pretty shine on the sun side of the black one that I may actually develop later in pastels from memory - he was pretty as a grackle, very iridescent neck, blue sky highlights on his sun side and rich darkness on the shadow side. I watched him walk around quite a bit before I finally got settled and had the sketchbook out. 

So today's been very productive, much more sketching and drawing and painting than usual. I'm feeling good but very tired.

Colourful Beefsteak Tomato

Colourful Beefsteak Tomato

From Memory

Pastel on paper

I was inspired again by Charlotte Herczfeld's wonderful video demo "Pastel Brands Matter" on YouTube. She used a 12 color set of Cretacolor Pastels Carre' and a dozen Unisons and Giraults to match the colors testing hard and soft pastels on three different types of paper. I've been fascinated by that demo ever since she posted it. 

Today, I followed some of her color choices and drew a beefsteak tomato from memory. My grandmother used to grow them, wide bulbous tomatoes almost like peppers for having an asymmetrical shape, rich and red and tasty. I used the other half of the orange Mi-Tientes sheet I did Sunset II on and started with Cretacolor Pastels Carre' for the first two layers. The background upper area is still just Cretacolor, the rest has Unisons as additional layers to put on more color and softer, broader strokes. At the very end I used a pale Terry Ludwig cream to do the "White" highlights that give it shine. 

I love how this simple study looks. That's half of why I did one - I loved her tomatoes and wanted something like that on my wall! Love the colors!

Sunset II

Sunset II

pastel on paper, 5" x 7"

Started early today so I might add more later on. I liked the sunset reference I used for the Pearlescent Pan Pastels dawn, so I used it again. It's by DAK723 posted for the October 2014 Pastel Spotlight challenge, which has a theme of Orange. Don's been doing color themes for a while, the only two left are red and violet, wonder what he'll come up with for them? Of course he could also do white, black, gray, brown as themes. I'll just have to see.

One of the things that intrigued me was the frosty field with its clumps of weeds and the lavender field, which I think is actual lavender. It was in the reference and I included it in both paintings but it's more obvious here. I think I managed to get the feel of the frost in this one. I also loved the receding trees and their numerous sky holes, something I succeeded in capturing this time.

Hibiscus

Hibiscus

8" x 10"

Pastel on tan paper

I used another of my photos from the SFGH Memory Garden for this, the big hibiscus shrub with the rich blue-violet flowers. I love their color and remembered it, the photo was way off but I could remember how they really looked. That's the benefit of using my own photos. I love the Reference Image Library at WetCanvas, but even if I'm using one of those photos I try to choose subjects that I've seen in life. A photo brings back memories and gives details, that's its best benefit. 

Proportion, perspective, color, values can all be distorted by the camera, but details and sometimes proportions on a relatively small element can be measured. Otherwise it gets very strange. Don't just copy the photo, remember as much as you can!

Two pastels today though! After I finished the Hibiscus, I did a clouds study on Aquabee Hemp Draw using hard pastels, my Cretacolor Pastels Carre'. I like those for their convenience. This isn't a serious painting but there are things I like a lot about it and may develop later in a larger, more elaborate piece. Will be playing with cloud shapes in several studies till I get it to do what I want.

Clouds from Memory

8" x 10"

hard pastel on multimedia paper

Red Apple Study, Pastel

Red Apple Study

life

7" x 9"

Cretacolor Pastels Carre' and Terry Ludwig Pastels

Aquabee Hemp Draw multimedia paper

Back to pastels and color today! I tested my Cretacolor Pastels Carre' first to see if they washed out with water for an underpainting by underpainting an apple. Then finished it using the same pastels dry and a few accents with Terry Ludwigs, also did the background very lightly with Ludwig Violets and a couple of tints from my first Mystery Box. 

I had fun with this. It's centered unlike most of my paintings, but it's just a simple study of a single object and I like how it came out. It reminds me a little of Charlotte Herczfeld's tomato studies. She's a big influence on me. If I'd properly followed her method I should have defined the shadow side in the underpainting witha  cool color, green or purple or blue, and the warm side with orange. Instead I just shaded between orange and yellow for brightness and followed light and shadow by value and hue - it worked but I'll be doing it again with the cool underpainting to see the difference sometime.

I also accomplished a little in terms of organization. Some time ago I bought two Derwent Pastel Rolls to keep my 72 Cretacolor Pastels Carre' in a container system that made them usable when I go out. Today, I broke all the sticks and rearranged them so that each roll has all 72 colors in its 36 slots. Two pieces per slot will let me bring these out with me on my garden excursions and any other outdoor painting I do. It's a handy little roll instead of an oversize box with an awkward styrofoam tray that made it hard to take the sticks out.

Cretacolor pastels wrap ready to go!

Life Sketches, Pen and Watercolor

Ari, Azalea and Trees

Pigma Micron pen and watercolor

Stillman & Birn Zeta journal 

7" square

Today was my biweekly outing to the SFGH Family Health Center Memory Garden. Of course because I forgot to bring my good camera, the Kindle, there were loads of roses in bloom unlike last time when there was only one rather bedraggled rose. Lots of flower photos taken with my phone though. I still had time to sketch, ink and paint the first azalea blossom on some small bushes out back at the patient drop-off and several trees out there that fascinated me. I ran them all together and left out cars, intervening buildings and background stuff because I felt like it. Not into sketching cars and buildings as much as nature.

Red Flowering Maple - Pastel

Red Flowering Maple

8" x 10"

Pastel on brown Canson Mi-Tientes smooth side

I started this with a sketch yesterday from a photo I took Wednesday in the Memory Garden at San Francisco General Hospital. I've looked at that tall plant, almost a tree height, for three years now. The flowers are a darker red than I painted because I didn't have the right values to do that, so I altered it and came as close to the value and hues as I could. 

Still, I like how this came out and do know plants vary in the color of their flowers. The sun was hitting the shiny outer surface of the petals in some interesting ways and the greenery was very rich. I had fun with it and have some other photos from this and many visits to work from in future.

There weren't many large flowers with distinct petal shapes in bloom, more daisylike ones and very small flowers on Wednesday. It varies what's in the garden as they remove some plantings and put in new ones depending on what's in bloom, constantly keeping it fresh. Some little orange violas were bright and cheery, I also got photos of bright violet foxglove-looking flowers on a spike head. I might do those another time, but I may have to get out my Unisons to get all the purple hues and values in them.

I enjoyed doing this one, and it'll occupy the black mat that I cut with an 8" x 10" opening instead of 7" x 10" for the Bluebird painting. I'd forgotten I changed the proportions on the Bluebird, so cut one extra mat - now happily destined for a good use! The strong colors will shine against black, I love how that looks.

White Curcuma exotic flower

White Curcuma

photo reference by Dewi on WetCanvas.com

Yesterday I didn't paint at all, was too tired after doing my clinic appointment. I had planned to do pastel plein air in the clinic garden but my van arrived half an hour early - after some preliminary photos I went out back and there it was. However, before I went, I did mat and frame the Bluebird painting, which does count as daily art to me as it's far more physical than most of my painting.

I used more blending in this White Curcuma painting than in most, contrasting a stick blended texture on the central flower with a blended loose background and some linear accents. I didn't prime the page with sanded primer, just worked directly on the 180lb white rough watercolor paper of my Stillman & Birn Beta pastel journal. I also taped a sheet of tracing paper over the page to protect the art, taped just on the outside right edge to fold over it. This has worked well for six pages of my Pastel Journal and I have high hopes of finishing 25 good pastel paintings in it.

Sketch wall with three of my paintings framed, bluebird is upper right.

So that was some serious accomplishment. I don't think I managed anything on Tuesday either but I could be wrong, posted it if I did. So much for memory, the fibro fog chews it up. The shot helps give me some energy but the outing itself to get it is so draining that I don't usually manage anything afterward.

So much for good intentions. Daily art is still "health permitting" and yeah, there is a reason I'm living on SSI instead of working full time as an artist. If I could do 40 hours a week painting and selling, I would so definitely go back to full time art - but that doesn't work when my disabilities don't permit more than a short session at best in a day.

Life Sketches in Pen-Watercolor Again

Life Studies 

Pen & Watercolor on Stillman & Birn Zeta Journal

Worth a second entry today! I had fun doing four more objects for my Scavenger Hunt list on what's nearly the last day of it. Tomorrow is the Overlap Day - mine's still active but a new one goes up with a friend's list. I thought I'd try to do all the list but didn't really get much more than usual. Still, it's a good challenge and every time I do it, I get that much more experience at life sketching.

This page isn't as perfect as the last one but I'm happy with the layout and don't think it's so bad that it drags the book down. Small imperfections are what shows it's real art instead of some kind of mechanical reproduction.

Everything was penciled freehand, then inked with the Pigma Micron pens and painted with Yarka St. Petersburg watercolors. I'm beginning to really enjoy this set, especially the unusual new colors. The pencil tip's in Glauconite and the Sofft tool in Shakhnazarskaya Red, a beautiful warm earth color that's lighter and more transparent than English Red. Oddly the pan actually looks darker, it's just an effect of the pigment. Could just be the opacity of English Red.

I might eventually get the full range of these watercolors. Oddly it'd be less expensive to get both other sets than to get one other set and 12 open stock colors to add to one, but I'm not worried about that. Each has a complete range in itself and could be used alone for painting outdoors. The palette box isn't that large and stacks nicely with my Zeta journal.

Pearl in Pearlescent Pan Pastels

Pearl in Pearlescent Pan Pastels

From life

on Stillman & Birn Beta 180lb rough white paper

Today's painting is an experiment with a new art supply. Always a joy. I'll be writing it up in more depth on Rob's Art Supply Reviews later, maybe tomorrow though as I'm feeling pretty tired. 

Painting a pearl to look like an actual pearl rather than a ping pong ball or something else opaque has been a lifelong goal. I saw paintings in museums as a kid, Renaissance and later, where artists did that. They put nobles in velvet with pearl and jeweled ornaments and draped goddesses in pearl necklaces and it looked as if you could reach into the painting and touch those precious things. I thought of them as the showoff stuff of art. Who needed a wealth of actual jewelry if you could paint it so well you couldn't tell it wasn't real? As many pearls and rubies as you wanted were right in your paintbox!

The only reason people like them is how they look, right? So paintings of them are as cool as the real thing. Not true for food or clothes but may still be true for precious gems. Ironically, today's synthetic rubies and sapphires are quite real and no more costly than cut crystal, they're chemically and physically the same with perfect color and any size you like. 

Being able to paint pearls though, is as rare a skill as it ever was. Bucket list item accomplished! I could have used the regular tints and gotten a good effect, but I like the Pearlescent Pans. There's an extra little shine to everything and the heavy glitter effect of the Coarse mediums is fun, sparkly, like those party nights when your friends toss glitter in your hair right before you dance. 

Pearlescent Pan Pastels Colors

plus four Mediums, Coarse and Fine black and white

The six colors are convenience colors in spectrum hues. I like them as much as the Tints they resemble, they'll give an extra sheen to many subjects. The fine texture effect is subtle and might go unnoticed in a painting, the Coarse is like throwing glitter in it and delightful for that.

Art journals folks will have a ton of fun with these, but fine artists can get good special effects with them too.

Life Sketches in Pen and Watercolor

Life Sketches in Pen and Watercolor

7" square Stillman & Birn Zeta journal

Pigma Micron pen size 01

Yarka St. Petersburg "Extended" watercolors set

I love my Zeta journal. All my life, as far back as I can remember, I've done pen drawing and wanted it to come out like these. I started getting there with certain small subjects from life even as a child because my dad taught me to pencil carefully first before inking. I did a lot of pen sketches of my pet white rat, Puck.

So this week I'm the host for the regular Scavenger Hunt challenge on "Artwork from Life" forum at WetCanvas.com. The host comes up with a list of 26 items to sketch from life, substitutions okay if you really don't have a cat or a figurine of a cat or a cat themed anything to draw. I suggested "Computer, because a CAT file in Windows is catalog," or "Person named Cat" since I know at least one. Several actually if I think back, but that's people not here at the moment. Of course my cat's very handy to draw and he's already in this one. He'll get in again under Animal and maybe under Matte since he's not shiny, and certainly if I do an eye from life it'd be more fun doing his than mine!

As luck would have it, I actually came up with a list that was hard for me. Usually that's other people's lists with items like "Something from your dining room" or "lawn mower" or something like that. I live in one room and the bathroom is separate from the loo, both shared with other tenants on my floor. Not in a suburban house with a car, driveway, living room, dining room, basement, attic, den, bedroom separate from studio, kitchen... it sort of boggles me sometimes how much space people have. No wonder most housemates are always bickering about cleaning up. 

So I did the list and I'm cherry picking the easy ones I have handy in my room. I'm sure I'll find more by the 22nd.

Love the 16 pen cube of Pigma Microns, All Sizes/Tips that I got from Blick recently. I use those a lot, actually use up these long lasting pens. They're perfectly waterproof so it's easy to pencil first and then ink, then start painting over it with a Niji waterbrush and any watercolor set I've got handy. Currently this is my new Yarka St. Petersburg Extended set. Extended has Rose in it and Rose Violet, two very useful colors, plus my favorite Russian (Hookers) Green and Ultramarine and Bright Blue (which I think is a Pthalo). Hansa Yellow. Raw Sienna and a redder earth that I really like, Shakhnazarskaya Red. Lovely earth red a bit softer and more transparent than English Red, which is also in it.

Yarka watercolors are particularly intense too. Very strong color and it dries nearly as bright as it looks wet. The lovely deep brown that predominates in the feather and rock is Voronezhskaya Black, actually more of a grayed brown sepia-ish color that I really love. The set has a warm and cold black. 

I might get the full range of these Yarka watercolors someday. Odd thing is, the cheapest way would be getting three full sets. Getting the two least overlapping sets and 12 extra colors would be more compact, but I'd pay $60 or so for the open stock pans instead of $40 for a third set. So I might just get the other sets in time and keep them stacked together. This was the best one for what I'm doing, though others have other favorites like Paynes Grey. 

Blick's doing a Zorn Palette Contest so I need to think about what I can paint in yellow ochre, Cadmium Red, Ivory Black and Chinese White. Could win $400 in watercolor supplies including 4 big tubes of those colors but also Kolinsky brushes and Arches watercolor block and pad. Very cool. Might go for something inspired by cave paintings since that's so much a cave painter's palette actually...

Orange Lily - Pastel ACEO

Just a small painting today.

Orange Lily is 3 1/2" x 2 1/2", an ACEO on gray ClaireFontaine PastelMat done with a 25 color Girault Landscape assortment supplemented with a red and a red-violet stick that I bought separately because the Landscape assortment lacked either a red or a violet. The photo reference is from the May Spotlight challenge on WetCanvas.com.

Every month the Spotlight challenge includes a lesson, this month's topic is Edges. So in this small painting I focused on the soft to vanished edges in the background, softened edges on some of the stems and leaves with some linear accents to sharpen up edges on some buds, leaves and of course the main flower. It came out vigorous and lively.

One of the nice things about working small is that I'm forced to keep things simple. I can't noodle after details of veins and spots in the petals, have to focus on the important shapes and graceful lines of the subject. I like how it came out. The contrast between finger blended background and stick-blended or unblended strokes is a bit stronger in person.

Finger blending mutes and dulls pastels. It creates perfect loose soft edges at the cost of some vibrance. The pigment crystals get broken down and crushed to more of a matte look. That's something I use to advantage sometimes in painting so that the main subject pulls forward with more intensity and texture.